On the heels of yesterday's
entry regarding Mr. Bush's side-stepping of the Presidential Records
Act of 1978, this issue has been picked up by none other than
Larry Klayman's Judicial Watch, Inc.,
with this statement:

Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes
government abuse and corruption, expressed grave disappointment in President
Bush’ decision to issue an executive order allowing the White House or former
presidents to veto the release of presidential papers.

Being who they are, they couldn't resist a dig at President Clinton while
applying gentle pressure to the current occupant of the White House:

The Clinton Administration improperly used executive orders to thwart the people’s
rights. We expected more from President Bush. He should now retract this executive order
to avoid a legal fight, added Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

A legal fight between Mr. Klayman and Mr. Bush would certainly be amusing.

Under the
Presidential Records Act of 1978, the public owns the official records
of Presidents and Vice Presidents. These documents can be accessed through
the Freedom Of Information Act beginning five years after the end of an
Administration (the law allows a President to postpone this for another seven years
under certain specific circumstances, but at the end of twelve years the documents
must be made available to the public).

Last summer the Bush administration decided to hold up the release of 68,000 pages
of presidential records from the Reagan/Bush White House. This appeared to be a
clear violation of the Presidential Records Act.

In a Fox News article
dated June 07, 2001, Anne Womack, assistant White House press secretary, is quoted as
saying that the delay in releasing the documents was temporary: "We've asked for a
short extension in order for the documents to undergo a legal review at the Justice
Department,".

The other shoe has now dropped. Today's Washington Post
reveals that the administration has drafted an executive order that would allow
former and incumbent presidents to " keep their records locked up for as long as they
want," according to Bruce Craig, executive director of the National Coordinating Committee
for the Promotion of History. Says Craig, "it reverses the very premise of the
Presidential Records Act, which provides for a systematic release of presidential records
after 12 years."

Why would the current administration want to suppress the release of non-classified documents
from a previous administration?

The Fox News story may provide a clue:

'Historians ... say they think President Bush is worried about what some of his top aides
might have written when they worked for Reagan in the 1980s. "I think what Bush is doing
is protecting the people who were in the Reagan administration and his father's administration
who are still around," said American University historian Anna Nelson.'

A historian would probably remember that the Reagan/Bush documents immediately at issue
cover a period when two of our favorite dictators were
Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The Reagan administration also secretly sold weapons to Iran
in order to finance terrorists - pardon me, freedom fighters - in Nicaragua, ignoring certain
legal niceties like the Boland Amendment.
During the resulting Iran/Contra investigation,
then Vice President and former CIA Director George Bush (Sr.) famously declared himself "out of
the loop", and Ronald Reagan's memory of the affair conveniently lapsed during subsequent Grand
Jury testimony on the matter.

It's not difficult to see why the son of George Herbert Walker Bush might prefer to hide information
about that disgraceful period. Its harder to understand why Congress, the press and the
rest of us let him away with it.

Even as the Administration appears incapable of effectively investigating or
responding to the Anthrax attacks, it seemingly has no shortage of law enforcement
resources when it comes to protecting society from the evil of medical marijuana.
Last week, federal agents in California raided and shut down the cannabis club in
West Hollywood, where over 900 people with ailments like cancer and AIDS had been
buying the drug. The club had operated with the approval of city officials and in
compliance with California law.

Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden is quoted in the
NY Times
today saying that "the recent enforcement is indicative that we have not
lost our priorities in other areas since Sept. 11".

Why is raiding medical marijuana providers still a priority for federal agents?
Shouldn't they be doing something productive, like inspecting checked baggage at
airports?

Tabulation and publication of the results of the
NORC Florida Ballot Project,
a count of 180,000 "invalid" Florida votes from the 2000 presidential election
has been postponed indefinitely.

"Right now, we don't have the time, the personnel or the space in the
newspaper to focus on this," Catherine Mathis, vice-president of corporate
communications at the New York Times Co., said in an interview. "There's a
much bigger story right now."

But right now, today, the NY Times contains six full pages of sports
reporting, replete with lots of statistics.
This tends to make the claim of lack of space or personnel sound
rather dubious. Given the media focus on point scoring to the virtual
exclusion of real issues during the 2000 election, it would seem that the
sports statisticians are the perfect crew to handle the analysis of the
NORC tabulation.

I'm so glad that our government has convinced the
networks to spare me from viewing any
video clips issued by the bad guys. Why, that recent
broadcast of Osama bin Laden's nasty speech was so incendiary that
I barely restrained myself from hurling both my slippers at the
television set! I feel so much safer now that my government is
actively protecting me from the locution of evil-doers.